Proud Yorkshireman, gardening expert, TV presenter and charity promoter, Alan Titchmarsh (http://www.alantitchmarsh.com/) has found time between 2001 and 2011 to write eleven novels. He is regarded by many as a sort of minor national treasure, and was awarded an MBE in 2000. Does any of this make him a decent writer? Only you can judge by reading his latest novel – ‘Bring me home’. This may appeal to many of you in having a Scottish setting. The front cover depicts Castle Stalker and the summary is as follows. Charlie Stuart the owner of a Scottish castle and disappointed father of a brood of grown-up children took in the full irony of his guest’s comment at a Sunday house party. His family – and his life – were far from perfect.
He had longed since childhood to inherit the Castle on the loch. He had fallen in love with the landscape and the wildlife that surrounded it and looked forward to the responsibilities that came with it but his mother’s devastating death while he was away at school and his father’s remarriage to an unwelcome stepmother had swept away any easy path to fulfilling his destiny.
Charlie has to grow up quickly but along with his inheritance and the discovery of the love of his life come unexpected complications that involve espionage, deceit and a mysterious death.
Now – thirty years since finally becoming the castle’s guardian – his past had caught up with him. It was about to tear his ‘perfect’ family apart.
320 pages in Hodder & Stoughton
ISBN 978-0340936917
Alan Titchmarsh